


The Heroes of Yore, the Men of Renown

by gooseberry



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: F/F, F/M, Family Feels, Genderswap, Inheritance, Love Triangles, Marriage, Politics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-05
Updated: 2014-09-05
Packaged: 2018-02-16 07:14:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2260761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gooseberry/pseuds/gooseberry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>It is, she knows, a pretty picture--a thoughtful, cunning picture: the last surviving child of the Stewards, leading the returning king into the city; a woman in a gown as white as the city walls, cradling the white scepter of the Stewards as though it is a child. She is a fitting end to the years of a kingless Gondor: an orphaned, unmarried woman, as bereft as a city and realm without a king.</i>
</p><p>  <i>(“I am a metaphor,” she had told Eowyn days before, when she had explained how she was to open the city gates and offer the throne to the king. “A personification of the city.”</i></p><p>  <i>“A city,” Eowyn had asked, “that is still battered by war?”</i></p><p>  <i>Farduil had laughed, feeling herself flush, and had said, “Perhaps it is more apt a metaphor than I should like.”)</i></p><p>---</p><p>Written for culumacilinte's prompt of an AU with a fem!Faramir, which hit all my kinks, because I love ladies, and I love exploring politics, marriages, inheritance issues, etc., through the lens of gender. </p><p>It's mostly a re-imagining of the end of RotK if Denethor had one (dead) son and one (living) daughter. Expect a ton of Steward of Gondor feels, because I love that family so much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Heroes of Yore, the Men of Renown

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Culumacilinte](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Culumacilinte/gifts).



She meets the brother first.

She is an orphan now, the last of her father’s house, and it is a peculiar sort of loneliness that she feels. It’s not as great as when she’d first heard of Boromir’s death--that had been far worse--but it is a loneliness that makes her feel cold.

(Yesterday she watched her father burn to death on a pyre he built himself. He’d said, “Farduil, give me your hand--”)

Her hands, though, are hot, blistered and white, and so she goes to the Houses of Healing to have them wrapped again: her fingers and her palms, her wrists and her arms. 

“Oh, my lady,” a woman sighs over her, and Farduil sits as quietly as she can, biting back her grimaces as the woman lays cold, wet cloths over the blisters.

That is where her uncle finds her, and a man of Rohan with him. The introductions are quiet, polite, and few in words:

“The Lady Farduilas, the daughter of my sister,” Imrahil says, “and the Steward Denethor,” and then, “This is Lord Eomer, of the Rohirrim.”

There are few other words. Eomer seems distant, and he keeps looking toward the far door. After a few moments, during which Imrahil gently touched Fardruil’s ruined hands, Imrahil says in a low voice, “His sister, the Lady Eowyn, is amongst the wounded--”

And so, some hours later, Fardruil goes to the room where the Lady Eowyn is laid. The lady looks almost a corpse, her face pale and her body still. When Fardruil asks, a woman says, “Her hands are cold, my lady.”

Fardruil can’t hold Eowyn’s hand herself--her hands are too tender, her skin burnt too badly to bear the pressure of touch. She instead satisfies herself with sitting by Eowyn’s bed, watching as women press cold cloths to Eowyn’s skin.

x

“The Lady Eowyn,” a servant says several days later, “is awake.”

Fardruil nods at her father’s record book, and the servant takes the book from her lap, lays it open the table. The servant steps back when Fardruil rises from her seat, and when Fardruil passes from the room, the servant bows. 

She makes her way to the Houses of Healing, and to the southern room where the lady has been. The Houses are emptier now than they were only days before--many of their occupants have left, whether through death or with the company which rode east. Farduil’s footsteps echo in the larger rooms, and the brush of her train over the stones fills the narrow halls. When she reaches Eowyn’s room, at the end of a long, silent corridor, she hesitates, then calls out, “Is the lady awake?”

The door opens quickly, a woman curtseying as she opens the door for Farduil. Farduil smiles at her, then steps into the room.

“Lady Eowyn,” she says, and she dips a shallow curtsey when she reaches the bed.

“My lady,” Eowyn replies, and Farduil sits by the bed.

Eowyn, Farduil thinks, is beautiful but cold; she is tall--as tall as Farduil herself--and slender, and her skin is very white. Her hair and eyes are pale where Farduil’s are dark, and her hands look strong, more than capable of wielding a sword and shield. Farduil folds her own hands--her thin, fragile hands, wrapped like birds’ wings--in her lap and asks,

“Are you well, my lady?”

A foolish question, no doubt; these are the Houses of Healing. Eowyn takes a deep breath, then says, “I am. I feel I am more than well enough to be out of this bed. The Warden has said I should stay here seven more days, but I do not wish it.”

“I see.” Farduil looks at Eowyn’s face, at Eowyn’s grim mouth and pale eyes, and offers, “There are gardens where you might walk. I shall have clothing brought for you--you are of a height with me--and we might walk, if you wish it.” Then, feeling a little unsure, “Or you might walk alone, if you would prefer it.”

She watches as women help Eowyn bathe and dress, as Eowyn’s hair is braided and a belt is tied about her waist, as her arm is set in a sling. When Eowyn is ready, they leave the room together, passing down the corridor and out to one of the gardens. The Houses of Healing are high up in the city, as high as the citadel, and its walls look down onto both the city and the fields beyond. They look out together, to the east, where the others have gone.

“I wish to be with them,” Eowyn says. “I had looked for death in battle, and with it renown and peace.”

Farduil bites her tongue and says nothing. 

(“Farduil,” her father had said, “give me your hand--”

And she had; she had closed her eyes and breathed in deeply, and then she had given her father her hand, had let him pull her up onto the pyre he had built.)

Presently, she says, “It is too late for anyone to join them, no matter how fast they rode. The war may still reach us, and then--perhaps then you may find your battle, my lady.”

She promises Eowyn an eastward window, and company in the gardens, whenever Eowyn should wish it. Eowyn says nothing to either promise, only bows her head before leaving the garden and Farduil. 

x

“They will heal,” the Warden says, but his words are slow and unsure. Farduil looks at her burnt, blistered hands, and feels the same uncertainty. 

“Will they?” she asks, but before the Warden can answer, she says, “No, it does not matter. It is a little enough hurt. Tell me, is the Lady Eowyn well?”

She listens to the Warden’s report as he wraps her hands: each finger by itself, so that the new skin (if there is ever new skin) does not graft her fingers together; thick, soft pads to her palms, where the burns are the deepest and the blisters are always weeping; thinning bandages up her arms, where the burns become nothing more than dark, red sores. The Warden says nothing of Farduil’s trembling and the tears she cannot fight back; he only offers a soft cloth and, when she nods, wipes her face gently, because she cannot do it herself.

When she feels more herself, she goes to walk in the gardens of the Houses of Healing, searching out Eowyn. It is three gardens before she finds her--standing at the wall, looking eastward. Farduil comes to stand by her and, when Eowyn finally turns from the wall, follows her further into the garden. 

They sit beneath a tree, on young spring grass that is still tender to the touch. Farduil has sat here before, though before it was always with Boromir, and the loss of him--

“Your hands,” Eowyn says, “are bandaged. How were you hurt?”

Farduil looks down at her hands laying in her lap and she wonders whether it was politeness or indifference that Eowyn has not remarked on her hands before.

“They were burnt,” Farduil says, and she blinks hard when her stomach turns cold. She looks at Eowyn to distract herself and, seeing Eowyn’s lashed down arm, she says, with as much humor as she can manage, “We have only one arm amongst us, my lady. I must beg your kindness and mercy.”

Eowyn’s smile is small and fleeting, but it is enough to give Farduil a glimmer of hope.

x

Farduil has more clothing sent to Eowyn: dresses and robes that she can no longer bear to wear herself, because they hold too many memories: a festival when Denethor had called her beautiful, a feast to celebrate one of Boromir’s successful battles; the long skirt that had flashed like fire when her brother had spun her through the hall, a mantle that had been her mother’s before it had been hers.

Eowyn is wearing the mantle, stars at her throat and her wrists, when the eagle comes. 

From the top of the wall of the Houses of Healing, Farduil can hear the echoing song of the city. When she looks down, she can see men and women and children in the streets, running and embracing, and she can hear wild shouts and laughter. She cannot stop her own laughter--cannot stop herself from laughing until she has to hide her face in her hands, the bandages catching her tears.

When Eowyn touches Farduil’s arm, it is unexpected enough that Farduil is startled out of her weeping. 

“Tears of sorrow or joy?” Eowyn asks, and when Farduil says,

“I do not know,”

Eowyn is kind enough to wrap her arm around Farduil’s waist. They stand close together for most of the day, Eowyn’s arm wrapped tightly around Farduil’s body. They speak little, because Eowyn’s face is yet white and still and because Farduil remembers too well the fear of having a brother at war--and because Farduil knows too well the pain of losing a brother at war.

At last, when they are parting for the evening, Farduil presses a kiss to Eowyn’s cheek and says, “News should come swiftly.”

x

The next weeks are weeks of politics. There is no Steward left in Gondor, and the King is out in the field, far past the city walls, unwilling to enter before his legitimacy is settled. Lord Hurin does what he is able, but he is neither Steward nor Prince, and unable to quite fill the emptiness left by Denethor and Boromir.

“It is the Lady’s house.” Hurin nods at Farduil, then adds, “She should welcome the king to the city, and no other.”

The handful of lords left in the city mutter amongst themselves, but they all nod in the end, saying, “It is only right. It was a long line, though it may now be spent.”

It is meant as a kindness, Farduil thinks, but she wonders how she will do it. How she will open the city gates to her new king, without her brother or her father beside her; how she will welcome someone to the throne when her father’s chair remains empty. (She wonders how she will be able to carry the weight of the crown with her ruined hands.)

“I thank you, my lords,” she says, and when the men smile at her, she smiles in return and says, in her strongest voice, “This will be a glad time for Gondor.”

She spends long hours sorting through Gondor’s resources, searching for every sliver of aid she can call for her city. Her father’s books are all well-kept, each a meticulous account of numbers, of men and women and livestock and goods; the revenue brought by taxes and that brought by trade. She finds out each extra store of grain and each extra pair of hands and then, with long lists of figures, she begins to shuffle the board. She sends extra hands to the quarry and to the fields, and she re-proportions the storehouses of food: less to the villages that sent workers to the cities; more to the cities that are rebuilding the wealth of Gondor.

Hurin is tireless. He fetches and carries all the books of Denethor, and he writes down the figures that Farduil offers. When she says, “No, not this page,” he bends close so that he can turn the pages of Denethor’s books, page after page until she says, “Yes, here--”

And when Farduil asks, feeling fretful and unsure, “Will it be enough?”

Hurin says, “I believe it will, my lady.”

And there is a long road ahead--it will take years to rebuild all of broken walls and decades to rebuild all of the broken population--but Minas Tirith is beginning to mend when her king returns.

x

The king comes to his city on the first even of May, early enough that the sun is still hanging above the mountains.

There are thousands, clustered near the city gates, ranging out along the walls, all waiting to watch their king enter their city. Farduil feels her heart beat rapidly in her chest, like she is a bird, or perhaps a leaping deer, and she says,

“Open the gates, Lord Hurin.”

She walks out of the city, and Hurin walks with her, just behind the edge of her train, and guards of the Citadel behind him. The king’s company is spread out across the field, past the crowds of spectators, and it takes some minutes to meet the narrow middle ground, where new spring grass is stubbornly growing.

(Weeks ago, this field was full of the dead and dying, the earth torn up to mud, wet with rain and blood. She had watched then, as the armies of Mordor had marched on her father’s city, and when her father had said,

“Come, Farduil--”

she had gone with him, following him back to the House of their Dead.)

When she has walked as far as she must, she curtseys deeply, deeper than she ever has before. (She has never had a king before, has never had anyone higher than her own father and brother.) 

“My Lord,” she says, when she has risen herself from the ground, “the last Steward of Gondor has passed, and there are no sons to do his office.”

“Yet he has a child left,” the king says, and he says loudly, “A White Lady for a White City--will you do your father’s office?”

And Farduil knows the words well. She has spoken them to herself many times now, in hours both early and late; she whispered them to herself this morning, before the sun had risen, when her women were lacing her into a gown as white as her city, and she murmured them all the day, as she paced in the cold halls of the Citadel. She knows her role, and she knows her words; she knows the failure of her father’s office, and the necessity to right the wrongs of her dead.

“Men of Gondor,” she cries, and her voice is as loud and as clear as her brother’s ever was: “Behold! one has come to claim the kingship again at last.” The crowds cheer whenever Farduil breathes, and the sound of it is an enormity, deep enough to shake her to the core of her breast. She cries aloud to the king’s men, and to the men of Gondor, too; she cries to the east, and to the west; to the north, and to the south. She asks, “Shall he be king, and enter into the City and dwell there?”

And, when all the people roar, she says, “I have brought forth from Rath Dinen the crown of Earnur, the last king.”

It is Mithrandir who crowns the king, aided by the Ring-Bearer. Farduil stands close--closer than any others--and Hurin stands beside her, holding her father’s scepter. When the king is crowned and when the people cheer, Hurin says, “You have done well, my lady.”

“Thank you, Lord Hurin,” Farduil says, and he passes her the scepter of the Steward before he steps back, leaving her alone at the side of the king. The scepter of the Stewards rests heavy and cold in her arms, tucked against the curve of her elbow. It is, she knows, a pretty picture--a thoughtful, cunning picture: the last surviving child of the Stewards, leading the returning king into the city; a woman in a gown as white as the city walls, cradling the white scepter of the Stewards as though it is a child. She is a fitting end to the years of a kingless Gondor: an orphaned, unmarried woman, as bereft as a city and realm without a king.

(“I am a metaphor,” she had told Eowyn days before, when she had explained how she was to open the city gates and offer the throne to the king. “A personification of the city.”

“A city,” Eowyn had asked, “that is still battered by war?”

Farduil had laughed, feeling herself flush, and had said, “Perhaps it is more apt a metaphor than I should like.”)

It is a charming metaphor here, on a May evening, with the sun sinking into the mountains and the first stars begin to shine. It is a charming metaphor that has all the people laughing and singing and cheering, because it is a metaphor that poses a beautiful question, then gives a powerful answer.

When the king nods at her, she turns and leads him to the city, where the walls, washed by the setting sun, look like they are burning.

x

She is given a place at the king’s table, amongst the lords and the Ring-Bearer’s companions. When she approaches the table, Mithrandir beckons for her, saying, “By my side, if you will,” and, when she has been seated at his left-hand, he says, “Now I may speak with you as much as I wish. Tell me, Farduilas, how is the city?”

Farduil hesitates, thinking of the many walls that were pulled down, the houses that collapsed, the wells which have become unclean; she thinks of the many widows and orphans, the bereft people who are returning to the city to find nothing but dead kinsmen. (She thinks of her father and how he had held her hand so firmly in his own, how he had said, “My daughter--”)

“As well as may be expected,” she allows. “It will heal, with time. There is aid coming from the southern provinces--what can be spared--and what fields were still fit have been planted. The coming winter may be hard, but if the summer is true, we will have enough to eat and to plant next year.”

“And the people?” Mithrandir asks, and Farduil answers,

“They will also heal. It is a glad time for Gondor. She has survived a terrible foe, and she has regained a king. It is,” Farduil says, and she can believe it with almost all her heart, “a glad time to be alive.”

“But also a time of many hurts,” Mithrandir says in a gentle voice.

Farduil looks away, to a far point across the hall. She fixes her eyes on it, so she can keep back the threat of tears, and she says, in her firmest voice, “Hurts may always heal, Mithrandir.”

“Of course,” he says in that still gentle voice. “And your hurts, Farduilas?”

Farduil blinks hard, then looks down at her hands, still bandaged and still so useless. She can bend her fingers, though it causes her great pain, and she can lift light things, so long as the weight is resting on the backs of her hands and her wrists. It is enough--she will make do with what she has.

“Healing,” she says, and she folds her hands more closely in her lap. “I am certain,” she says, and there is not even a quiver to show her lie, “that they will heal as well as any other’s.”

The feast is long, and Farduil is famished by the end. Her hands cannot manage the delicacy of movement necessary to wield knife and fork, and there are few foods before her that can be properly eaten by hand. Mithrandir notices her problem quickly, and he murmurs, “I am certain that the king would not think it amiss if you ate with your fingers.”

Her flush feels hot, then cold, and she says, “Perhaps not, but I’d rather wait until the privacy of my own room.”

Mithrandir, though, is apparently not to be dissuaded, and he cuts slivers of meat and cheeses, spreading them with butter and sauces onto the small breads that had been placed before them. He sets small bread after small bread on Farduil’s plate, each with a different meat or cheese or sauce, and he says, “If there is one you prefer--”

Denethor would be furious, if he was here--but if Denethor was here, and still Steward and master of Gondor, Farduil does not think Mithrandir would be invited to his table. But, she thinks as she eats a small bread, if Denethor was here and Farduil’s hands were so ruined, Denethor would have nothing but foods to be eaten by fingers--and Boromir would undoubtedly tear each food into pieces small enough for her, would certainly hold each platter as long as it took for Farduil to decide what she wanted to eat. 

“When my mother grew ill,” Farduil says, in a low enough voice that only Mithrandir will be able to hear, “my father had the tables laid with nothing but foods from Dol Amroth and the Bay.”

“Denethor loved the Lady Finduilas a great deal,” Mithrandir says in an equally low voice, and Farduil says,

“Yes, he did.”

x

Farduil can still remember her mother’s slow, fading death, how her mother’s skin had grown pale and slack, how her fingers had grown thin and trembling. She still remembers how her father would come to her mother’s rooms every day, to sit beside her and speak in a low voice. 

She’d been young then, only four or five, and still dressed in the white dresses of infants and the smallest children. She’d been allowed to stay in her mother’s rooms for hours at a time, so long as she remained quiet and still, and that had never been much of a hardship. 

Farduil had been a quiet child, and now, as a quiet woman, she’s unsure if it is her nature, or if it is a trait she learned in her mother’s rooms. Either way, she thinks she must have been a strange little thing, being such a small, sober creature as she was--but she’s grateful for it, that she had been so quiet and still that she’d been allowed to sit at her mother’s feet for hours at a time, that she had been able to sit so close to her father whenever he had visited; grateful that she still has a memory, as faded as it is, of her parents sitting close to one another.

When her mother died, her father had the rooms closed, and Farduil was quietly, softly lost in the Citadel. There was no longer any place in which Farduil could quietly play, or rather, there was no longer a person at whom’s feet she could quietly play. 

It’s not that she had been abandoned, because there was always someone there--a lady to correct her faults or a nurse to fix her dress, servants to fetch and carry and mend and watch. And there had always been Boromir, offering her gifts: scraps of stories and twists of ribbons, the time to tease Farduil and to teach her how to ride a horse astride. So she hadn’t been abandoned--but she had been lost, rattling through the Citadel like a pebble cast down a mountainside, and Denethor had been lost alongside her, for the long years as Farduil clattered through the halls and through her childhood, and as Denethor sequestered himself in his offices.

When Farduil was twelve, she had been given her mother’s rooms. Her father had told her himself, calling her to his side.

“Farduil, my daughter,” he had said, and he lifted her from her curtsy, kissing the top of her head. “Your ladies,” he said, “tell me that your lessons are going well, and that you show great wisdom for your age.”

“Father,” she had said, unbearably pleased with his interest in her. He’d given his arm to her then, leading her from his office and into the corridor. When she slipped her hand through his elbow, he caught it, pressing it firmly against his forearm.

“Your mother’s rooms,” he said as he led her down the corridor, walking slowly with her, as he so rarely had before, “have been empty for some time. If you want them, they will be yours. I think,” he continued, before Farduil could answer, “that it is time you became the lady of our house.”

She was moved from her rooms within the week; her childish dresses were taken away, and she was given new dresses, of the rich colors and lush fabrics befitting a lady; her hair was twisted and braided, tied into intricate knots on her head with ribbons and bits of gold and silver wire.

“You look like Mother,” Boromir had said once or twice, when Farduil was thirteen or fourteen, trying to run a household half so well as her mother before her. Farduil had smiled, pleased, until Boromir added, “At least, if one ignores how short you still are.”

But it had never escaped her then, and it does not escape her now, that her father loved her for her mother’s sake--that her father had loved her because she looked like Finduilas, that her father had loved her because she had the same hair and the same figure and the same laugh, because she could wear the same dresses and perform the same tasks. And it never escaped her that she never had a suitor, not when she was twenty, nor when she was thirty. Her father’s love was a thin thing, but it was a jealous thing, and Farduil coveted it greatly, as greedily as a starving man covets food and drink.

There are times when she considers what she would have done for her father’s love. There are times when she wakes in the night, sweating from her dreams, and she thinks of what she did for her father’s love. She thinks of the Silent Street, and the pyre poured over with oil, and she thinks of how her father had held her tightly, her hands in his; how he had said, “Farduil, give me your hand.”

How he had said, as the fires had begun, “Together--”

She thinks of burning to death, and the gladness to be found in such things. She thinks of how desperate she has always been, for her father’s love, and for her brother’s; she thinks of how desperate Gondor is, for the love of a new king after so long a time left abandoned.

“I am a metaphor,” she had said to Eowyn, and to herself she had said, “I am a copy, and a sometimes poor one at that.”

x

The king comes to speak to her on his second day in the city. It is still early morning when one of Farduil’s women comes to announce the king’s presence in Farduil’s rooms. Farduil is dragged up from her seat, and she stands as still as she can as her women strip her of her shift. They scour her skin with quick, fierce strokes of wet sponges and yank the tangles out of her hair, then they dress her, tying her laces and clucking over the time.

“Leave it,” she suggests to the woman who is brushing her hair. The woman seems horrified at the thought of Farduil greeting the king with unbound hair, and Farduil winces when the woman brushes all the faster, clucking her tongue disapprovingly.

When Farduil is finally able to greet the king in her outer room, she feels like a young girl--still red-faced from her fierce washing, her hair plaited and tied like a child. When she considers the weary lines in the king’s face and the streaks of gray in his hair, she thinks that it is not an odd feeling to have. 

“Lady Farduilas,” the king greets her, and she curtseys for him, as low as she would curtsey for her father.

“My lord,” she replies, and she motions toward the chairs set before her table, asking him, “Would you care to sit?”

The king wastes no time in pleasantries. He asks after her health and, when she has answered, “Fine, my lord,” he says,

“Your family has done a great service for Gondor. I would have the office of the Steward last as long as my line, and for it to remain the office of your heirs.”

It is a peculiar feeling that grows in her breast at the king’s words. There is warmth at the thought of her father’s office remaining, at the thought of her father’s line continuing in the service it has known for so long. There is coldness as well, however, because she is the last of her father’s line.

“I am meant to marry, then, my lord?” she asks, and the king says,

“If you will, Lady.”

She gives a short laugh, then asks, smiling, “I trust you do not mean for us to marry, my lord.”

The king looks younger when he smiles--younger, and not unlike Boromir. When she sees the humor in his face, she thinks she can understand why Eowyn spoke so little, yet so poignantly, of the king. He must be an easy man to love.

“No, my lady,” the king says, “I do not. The choice of your husband shall be yours. If there is any man….”

He trails off tactfully, and Farduil turns her smile down toward her own hands. The king must not expect an answer, because he is quick to turn the conversation to another task, asking, “May I see your hands, Lady?”

She had heard that the king was a healer, and that he had cared for Eowyn in the Houses of Healing, but she still hesitates, long enough that the king has had time to drag his chair next to Farduil’s. When he is sitting so close, and looking at her so expectantly, she cannot find a reason to say no, and so she lifts her hands, lets the king reach out and take them.

It is not so different from the Houses of Healing, nor from the care she has received from the Warden there. There is nothing magical about her hurts, no wound that can only be healed by a king’s touch or by a forgotten plant. Her hands are burnt and misshapen, a painfully common hurt with a painfully common cure.

“It will only take time,” Farduil offers when the king is looking dismayed. Time, to wait and to see--she watches as he unwraps the bandages, then turns her hands over so he can inspect the palms, the open sores which, all these weeks later, are still weeping.

“The Quest would never have succeeded without Boromir.”

The king’s words are unexpected, and they shock Farduil into silence. The king touches Farduil’s fingers gently and says, “If not for your brother, we would never have made it so far south. He was a strong man, and wise. His death was a great loss.”

Farduil takes her hands from the king’s, turning her wrists so she can press her sleeves against her eyes. The king says nothing as she cries, but when Farduil has managed to stop her tears, the king says again, “He was a great man and a mighty lord, my lady.”

He bandages her hands before he leaves, wrapping soft, clean linen about her palms. When Farduil says, “It is my punishment for my foolishness,” the king makes a soft sound, then bends his head to kiss the backs of her hands, both her right and her left.

“My family,” she says, in an aching, trembling voice, “has fallen. We were all foolish--my father, my brother, myself--”

“Your family stood against evil for longer than most others.” The king’s face is lined again, old and tired and not unlike Farduil’s father’s in the last decades of his life. “A great deal was asked of your family, and if not for your line--” He hesitates, then says, “If the Stewards of Gondor had faltered, then all would have been lost.”

“Thank you, my lord,” Farduil says when the king rises to leave her rooms. He touches her arm as she rises from her seat, his fingers polite and cooly distant where they are pressed against her elbow. It is the utmost level of decorum, the way he guides her past her table; unnecessary, but unerringly polite. She thinks he might be the exact king Gondor needs for these coming years: gentle, and firm, and heartbreakingly good.

(She thinks that he may even be a better man than Boromir, with all the quiet, gentle distance that Boromir could never learn.)

“I would ask,” the king says as they walk to the door together, “that you come to court tomorrow. There are many cases to be heard,” he is frowning now, looking grim and unhappy, “and several of them concern you.”

“My lord,” Farduil repeats, and she curtseys when he leaves--curtseys lower than she ever did for her father.

x

“The king will have me marry,” Farduil says the next day, testing the words as she says them. She is sitting a garden alcove not far from the rooms that have been given to Eowyn and Eomer. Eowyn is sitting beside her, silent and still, and Farduil has been turning words over in her mind, trying to find what she wants to say.

At this, Eowyn shifts beside Farduil, and Farduil clears her throat, says, “To continue my father’s line.”

They are quiet for a long time. One of Boromir’s hounds, a fawn-colored mastiff with a sweet disposition, is lying across Farduil’s feet, and Farduil watches the dog sleep, its tail beating slowly as it dreams. She wonders of what dogs dream--of what dead men dream--and when Eowyn shifts again, Farduil wonders fleetingly of what Eowyn dreams, and for what she wishes.

She is still wondering, all idle and fanciful thoughts, a breath of romanticism in the midst of all the franticness of life, when Eowyn asks her, “And who will you marry?” 

And this is one dream which Farduil had never known, nor considered. All her life had been wrapped up in her brother and her father. She had lived with them, and for them, and she had never thought that she would have a household wholly distinct from theirs. She had never thought that she would marry.

“I am not sure,” Farduil says, smiling for herself and for Eowyn, feeling self-conscious. “I had never considered--a lord or a prince of Gondor, most like.”

When Eowyn faces her, Eowyn looks stern, and Farduil feels her own smile grow. She laughs breathlessly, then says, “The king has already given me Beregond for my household. I think that, should he have his way, he will give me a dozen princes.”

“He should make you a prince, rather than give them,” Eowyn murmurs in a low voice, and when she hears it, Farduil can only laugh the harder.

x

As summer comes, Farduil tries to put the final orders to Denthor and Boromir’s households. The last of their servants are sent away--those that Farduil cannot afford to retain herself--as well as many of their things. 

Denethor’s libraries are carefully catalogued, the lists of books compared with the libraries of the Citadel itself, texts returned or exchanged. Many of them, Farduil keeps; many more of them are sent to the Citadel’s libraries, where they will be kept until Farduil has need of them. Her father’s other things--clothes, ornaments, the furnishings of his rooms--are likewise divided, some to Farduil’s own keeping, most scattered through the Citadel. The king says that Farduil should keep as much as she wants; that Farduil should take whatever she wishes, when she continues the line of the Stewards. Farduil looks over Denethor’s things: the chair in which he so often sat, the gilt weight he left upon his desk, the dark furs he would lie over her shoulders when it was winter and she visited his offices. There are memories tied up in each thing, and she touches her father’s furs.

“It would be a heavy weight to carry with me,” she says, and she takes the furs, and leaves most everything else behind.

Boromir’s household is a far different challenge. His horses are moved into Farduil’s stable, and his hounds have been living in her rooms since he left for the Quest the year before. Other things are divided amongst the men Boromir called friends: shields and swords and beautifully tooled quivers; a metal bow that he had found somewhere south of Gondor, and all the oddities he had collected over his years.

Farduil hangs onto every scrap of paper Boromir had written upon, every strange, slanted drawing he had made; the broken toys of childhood she finds tucked deep inside a chest, and the deep green stone he had always juggled for her. Those are the things she keeps for herself--the fragments and the broken things, the pieces of Boromir’s life that showed the most wear. The things he’d loved too much, the intensity of his love creating fractures.

Farduil is in the midst of this ordering when Eowyn leaves Minas Tirith. They part in Farduil’s rooms, standing near the outermost door. Boromir’s hounds are milling between them, pressing up against Farduil’s side, and against Eowyn’s side, too, and Eowyn’s face looks pinched and unhappy.

“I would not leave you at such a time,” Eowyn says, “but I must go back to my own land, and aid my brother in his labor. The one whom I loved as a father--I must prepare a place for him.”

And Farduil understands far too well--and not well enough. There was none left for her to bury, with her brother lost to waters and her father lost to flames; there are no corpses for her to place beyond the doors of Rath Dinen. Her only task is the care of their households, the systematic dismantling of their possessions and the scattering of their memories. It is, she is certain, a dark thing, to envy those who still have the bodies of their loved ones. It is, she is certain, a foolhardy thing, to covet Eowyn’s tasks.

She laughs shortly, her throat tight, and she says, “We are women. We must both care for our dead, and for their households. No,” she says, and she lays her hand against Eowyn’s elbow, pressing lightly so that it will hurt neither of them, “do not--I would not have you feel badly, nor worry. We’ve both tasks to complete.” 

Eowyn looks unconvinced and unassured. When she embraces Farduil, her arms are firm and her body seems to tremble.

“I will return,” Eowyn says before she kisses Farduil’s cheek. Eowyn’s lips feel cool and dry, and as steady as Eowyn’s voice and Eowyn’s promise.

(Boromir had done much the same. He had kissed her gently, and had said, “I will return, Sister.”

He had given her many promises--promises of return, promises of a restored Gondor, promises of better days and brighter years. He’d promised her a thousand things, and then he had ridden north, and he had never returned.)

“I wish you a safe and pleasant journey,” Farduil says, and she smiles for Eowyn, and when Eowyn leaves with her brother and the other Riders of Rohan, Farduil watches. The number is small, with most of the Riders having returned to Rohan in the weeks previous; it does not take long for the last Rider to disappear into the distance, following the road north.

(At times, it feels as though Farduil loses near everyone she loves to the northern roads. At times, it feels as though she is all that is left here, all her kin lost to water and to flame, to the memory of the sea.) 

She returns to her rooms with the coming of dusk, and she lies on her bed, watching the dark creep from the corners of the room outward. She tucks her hands into her sleeves, and waits; it is not until the small hours of night that sleep takes her.

x

It is some days after midsummer when Eowyn and Eomer return to Minas Tirith. Farduil waits beside Aragorn and Arwen to greet Eowyn and Eomer, and she thinks that she can see Eowyn’s face brighten when their eyes meet. 

“I had wondered if you would come,” Farduil says once Eomer and Eowyn have dismounted and Aragorn has greeted his guests. Eomer is standing some feet away, speaking with Aragorn and Arwen, and Farduil takes the opportunity to claim Eowyn’s attention for herself. She is not embarrassed, nor ashamed, to admit that she has missed Eowyn during these last months.

“I said I would,” Eowyn says, maybe a little sharply, and Farduil tries to smile apologetically.

“You did,” she says, “but I was still afraid I wouldn’t see you until we reached Edoras.”

Eowyn looks pleased at Farduil’s words, and Farduil feels pleased at that. She leans forward and, when Eowyn makes no move to step away, kisses Eowyn: Eowyn’s right cheek, and then her left; lastly, Eowyn’s mouth. When Eowyn smiles, Farduil smiles in return and says, “Welcome to Minas Tirith, my lady.”

Eowyn and Eomer are only in Minas Tirith for a few short days, only as long as is necessary to finish preparing for the journey to come. The size of the court that will travel with Theoden’s bier is breathtaking, and Farduil searches out Hurin so that she can admit how overwhelmed she feels.

“We are only missing a dwarvish court,” she points out, and when Hurin has finished laughing, she admits, “It is more lively than it ever was when my father was Steward. It has just,” she says, “been a very long year. I feel a little tired, I suppose.”

Hurin, she thinks, understands. She is certain that he feels a grief like her own, coupled with the same breathless joy as that which she feels whenever she looks out over the city, still shining white after all that has fallen. It is all those wounds, so slow in healing, and the pleasure that can be found within the aching pain.

“Shall I go with you to Edoras?” Hurin asks.

“No,” Farduil says. “No, you should remain in the city. Beregond shall go with me.”

When the court finally leaves, it is a great procession. Theoden’s bier goes first, with Riders of Rohan surrounding; Aragorn’s court follows closely behind, alongside Eomer’s, and Farduil finds herself tucked neatly amongst them, riding alongside Eowyn, with Beregond just behind her. 

When she looks ahead, she can see Theoden’s bier and wain and, beyond that, the road leading north, empty and quiet. When she looks back, she sees a long processional line, stretching beyond what she can see, and while it is peaceful, it is anything but quiet. There is singing and laughter, and always the chatter of people talking amongst themselves. It is nothing like the aching, somber procession Farduil had led for her mother, and she is glad for it--she is glad for this time, this gentle mingling of grief and joy and the unexpected hope found on the road leading north.

“You look glad, my lady,” Beregond remarks when he is lifting his hands to her, to help her from her saddle at the noontime rest. Farduil rests her arms on his shoulders, leaning forward as he lifts her from the saddle.

“I am,” she says, and she smiles at him, says again, “I am very glad, Beregond.”

x

A tent is marked for Farduil and Eowyn, set between the tents of Aragorn and Eomer, and Farduil thinks it is half for want of propriety, and half for Farduil’s own helplessness. When night has fallen and they have gone into their tent, Farduil remarks to Eowyn, “I feel as though I am ward of the king.”

Eowyn frowns as she motions for Farduil to turn, and when she is undoing the laces of Farduil’s dress, she asks, “Are you?”

“Perhaps,” Farduil says, “though I think it is less me, and more the children I am meant to bear. Thank you,” she adds when Eowyn finishes unlacing Farduil’s dress, tugging so that the dress falls from Farduil’s shoulders. 

She is not unaware of her helplessness, of her neediness in the smallest of details--the thick clumsiness of her own ruined hands that leaves her unable to lace her own dresses or to plait her own hair, to cut her own food or to write her own letters. She watches as Eowyn folds the dress carefully, setting it to the side before she motions for Farduil to sit. When Farduil does so, Eowyn moves to stand behind her, untying the end of Farduil’s plait.

“You seem to take to your cage far better than I did mine,” Eowyn says. Farduil can feel Eowyn’s fingertips dragging slowly through her hair, cool and strong.

“Well,” Farduil says, and she clears her throat before she says, “I do not think our cages were quite the same. I never wanted to to do the same things as my brother, nor any thing of renown. I was content to spend my time in my father’s library, or by his side, listening to his councils whenever he would give me leave to join him.” Farduil laughs shortly, then says, “I never wanted to leave Minas Tirith. I still do not. I do not--” Her voice cracks then, and she takes a slow breath, closing her eyes before she says, “I am of a different temperament than of my brother, and of you. I do not think I have quite the same passions.”

They are quiet then, as they ready for bed. The tent is large enough for twice their number, or perhaps thrice, but Eowyn pointedly repositions the beds, dragging the frames until the two beds are less than half an arm’s length apart. When Farduil begins to extinguish the lights, one of the few tasks she can still easily accomplish, Eowyn says, “One light--leave one light--”

The last light, a small lantern, is set in the space between their beds, and it is enough light that Farduil can see Eowyn’s face clearly when Eowyn reaches out across the space.

“My brother,” Eowyn says, her fingers wrapped loosely around Farduil’s, “is a good man. He would treat you well.”

“He would,” Farduil agrees, because she has seen the way Eomer treats his sister, and because she remembers how Eomer had fretted over Eowyn in the Houses of Healing. She thinks of it, of sharing a tent with Eomer instead of Eowyn, and then she laughs shortly and says, “We would be sisters, then?”

Eowyn’s smile is small, but it is there, and Farduil thinks that is why she says to Eowyn, “I am sorry you were not born a man. I would rather have married you than your brother.”

She pulls her hand from Eowyn’s then, and turns on her bed, putting her back to Eowyn. It was a foolish thing to say, perhaps; a hurtful thing, certainly. She watches the strange little figures cast onto the tent wall by the lantern, and it is while she blinking fiercely that she hears Eowyn say,

“I wish that as well.”

They say nothing else that night. Farduil lies awake for most of the night, long after the lantern goes out. When she does sleep, it is uncomfortably; she tosses and turns, and seems to always be losing her blanket--and trying to find it with her ruined hands is a lesson in frustration. When morning finally comes, Farduil is nearly bristling with irritation, all of it directed at herself.

Eowyn says little to Farduil; “Lift your arms,” and, “Shall I braid your hair?” Simple questions and simpler commands. Eowyn helps Farduil dress for the day with brisk, impersonal touches, and Farduil feels a line of unhappiness build along her spine. 

When the time comes for the procession to move on, they part ways without a word; Eowyn moves forward toward the other Riders, and Farduil watches her go before she turns as well, moving back in the line to ride near her uncle.

The procession has not been long on the road when Farduil finds Eomer riding up alongside her. He looks a great deal like his sister, particularly when he smiles, and he is smiling now, asking her, “Might I ride beside you, Lady?”

And he rides beside her for the entirety of the day. Their conversations aren’t stilted, but neither are they smooth. Farduil will offer a thread of conversation, or Eomer will, and a few minutes of conversation will be made. Then, that thread exhausted, they lapse into silence until something stirs them: a bird flying overhead, a hill seen in the distance, an almost-forgotten memory jarred by the slow, methodical pace of the procession. 

Eomer tells her a little of Edoras, and Farduil tells him a little of Minas Tirith, and they each say a great deal about smaller, far more inconsequential things: the weather, the road, the color of their favorite hounds. They say nothing of the War, and even less of their dead. The only topic more firmly skirted is that of Eowyn.

Whenever the procession stops, Eomer is quick to come to Farduil’s side, taking Beregond’s place in lifting Farduil from her saddle and, after the rest is over, lifting her back up onto her saddle. His careful attentiveness puts Farduil in mind of Boromir, and she wonders if this is how courting always is--if, had she been allowed out from the reach of her father’s house, she would have been paid such attention by the lords of Gondor.

His attentiveness goes some way in smoothing over the pain and frustration Farduil has been harboring since the evening before. By the time evening has come, Farduil is able to smile for stretches of time, until something puts her in mind of Eowyn and she is struck with that gut-wrenching twist of unhappiness and guilt. If Eomer sees it in her, he keeps his silence, and if he makes even bolder efforts to bring Farduil into a good humor, she keeps her silence, too. When the procession draws to a halt, they part with friendly words:

“If I am blessed, I will see you on the morrow,” Eomer says, a charming forwardness that makes Farduil smile, and Farduil says,

“I look forward to it, my lord.”

She has not been standing alone long when Imrahil finds her, leading her away from the bustle at the center of camp. When they have reached the edge, where it is far more quiet, they stop and turn, looking back into the camp. It is a chaotic thing to watch--men rushing about as tents are thrown up and fires are begun. They are watching the camp when Imrahil says, “The Lord Eomer rode with you today.”

“He did,” she agrees, feeling mild and still a little amused. Imrahil seems to catch her amusement, because he chuckles beside her, then says, in a light voice,

“He is a good man.”

“He is,” she says again.

When Imrahil speaks again, the lightness is gone from his voice. He does not sound grim, but he sounds stern, and his voice is like hooks, dragging the levity from Farduil. “Would you accept him, then?” Imrahil asks, and Farduil says,

“Yes, if he asked.”

x

“Would you be happy if I married your brother?” Farduil asks when the tent is mostly dark, only a single candle flickering from the other side of Eowyn’s bed. 

It is their seventh night in the tent, and it is sobering to know that they are only half of the way to their destination. It is far more sobering to know that their arrival may be a homecoming for not only the Rohirrim, but for Farduil as well. 

She can hear the rustling of Eowyn’s blankets, then Eowyn’s voice, quiet in the dark of the tent: “You would remain in Edoras with us.”

“I would,” Farduil says, and Eowyn says,

“I would remain there as well.”

And Farduil says, “You would.”

She lies there quietly, waiting, because she has learned that with enough time and enough patience, Eowyn can always be persuaded to speak more. It is not long before Eowyn’s voice says, softer than before, “My aunt died in childbirth. And my grandmother.”

And that is not how Farduil’s mother died, but she has heard enough women speaking of how after Farduil’s birth, Finduilas was never so strong again--how, winter after winter, she grew more quiet and more frail, until she was the wisp that Farduil remembers. She says: “They say my mother’s marriage killed her. Leaving her home and traveling to Minas Tirith--they say that she faded when she left the sea behind her.”

Then she shakes herself and says, “I am not so delicate.” And, when she has thought of how the halls of the Citadel haunt her, she says, “I think I might be happy, to leave the city behind me.”

Eomer offers his suit the next day, when the long procession has stopped for a meal just after the noon hour. They settle not far from the king’s smaller company, close enough that they are still within sight, but with enough distance that the company’s conversation--and, in turn, Eomer and Farduil’s--is indistinct. 

He speaks first, and with that same charming, gentle forwardness Farduil has come to expect in the past few days: 

“I am aware,” he says, “of the affection you hold for my sister, and that which she holds for you.” He clears his throat, then says, “I would offer you a place in my household, if you would want it.”

“As your wife?” Farduil asks, and she watches with delight as he flushes, looking away from her. She forgets how young he is, and how young Eowyn is in turn.

“If you would want it,” Eomer repeats, still looking away from her, and Farduil smiles.

“I would not be adverse,” Farduil says and, when Eomer looks back toward her, she says, “I think I could find happiness in Edoras.”

x

“I see,” the king says with a frown. He spares only the slightest glance toward Eomer before he turns toward Farduil. “If you are certain, Lady--”

“I am,” she interrupts, lifting her eyebrows at the king when he frowns all the more. “If there is a reason you feel that this match is disadvantageous--”

“No,” the king says and then, with a sigh: “And yes. You are both the end of a household, and the beginning of a new. Rohan will need an heir, as will Ithilien.”

“Then they shall both have an heir.” Some part of it is bravado. She knows the difficulty in bearing children; she’s lost women in her own household to childbirth, and she has seen other women curse their own bodies. She’s heard the gossip of families filled with daughters, one girl-child born after another, year after year. There is bravado in her words, and in her jaw as she sets it. 

“An heir,” she repeats, “for each house,” but it is Mithrandir who convinces the king.

“The love between Rohan and Gondor has been weak of late, and nearly broken,” Mithrandir says. “To forge new links between the Houses--”

The king looks grim, but he nods at last.

“We must speak, then,” he says, “of what will be done, now and in the future.”

Eomer murmurs something in a low tone, and Farduil takes a breath, lets it out slowly. 

She can only think of what follows as a bartering. She may bring twenty of her household--no, Imrahil protests, that is not enough, she is a lady--thirty, perhaps? And some of Eomer’s shall be sent to Gondor, a gesture of goodwill and compromise. _These_ of her lands she shall put into trust; _these_ she shall retain control over. _This_ is what king shall give to Farduil, and _this_ he shall give to Eomer. 

The lamps burn low as agreements are made. Farduil has to lean forward in her chair so that she can read what is written: fosterlings, trade agreements, the use of her father’s land and the promise of Eomer’s Rohirrim. At times, she objects.

“My father’s wealth shall stay with Ithilien,” she says once, and Eomer’s hesitation is short, only the length of two breaths before he nods his agreement. 

It is a neatly divided marriage, lands and wealth split between Rohan and Gondor, households joined in through their fragile compromises. At last, when the lamps have begun to gutter, the king says, “Very well. It is enough for now. We may finish this in Edoras.”

Farduil looks over the paper once more, at the tallied numbers and promises; what she shall give, and shall be given in turn. Hidden between the neat columns is the long-cast fate of her blood. She will be a queen of a foreign land. Her eldest son shall be a king of Rohan, and her second a prince of Gondor. Her daughters will be cast long into other houses, to breed new kings and princes. (Not, she thinks, unlike herself. A woman gone to a foreign land, to love a foreign people, to bear a foreign king.)

“It is enough for now,” Farduil agrees with the king, and when Eomer smiles at her, she smiles in return. The guttering of the lamps grows, the dull snap of flames dying, and Farduil passes the paper back to the king.

“Farduilas?” Imrahil asks, and she rises from her chair so that she may give her curtsey to the king. 

The camp is quiet when she leaves the king’s tent, her arm tucked in with Imrahil’s. Her uncle makes a thoughtful sound as the flap of the tent falls behind them, then makes the sound again.

“Uncle?” she asks, and he lifts her hand, turning it so that he can kiss the ruined skin of her palm. 

“I remember,” he says softly, “when my sister left for Minas Tirith.” He lowers her hand, clasping it gently between his hands. “My daughters will leave soon, for their own marriages. It is hard,” he says, “to say farewell to sisters and to daughters.” His hands tighten around hers, and he says, “To nieces.”

It is hard to force back the burning of tears; Farduil blinks quickly, then lifts her head so that she is looking up at the night sky. It is obvious, she knows; it is more so when she lifts her free hand, so that she can press the hem of her sleeve against her eyes.

“I want this,” she says, and it is the truth--she is certain it is the truth--but there is beginning of a hole in her belly, a yawning sort of doubt that is growing inside her.

When Imrahil kisses her hand again, he does not lift it; rather, he bends low, bowing over her hand. The tears burn hotter in Farduil’s eyes.

“I am certain,” Imrahil says, “that you will find happiness in Edoras.” When he straightens, she thinks she might see a smile on his face, but she’s not certain. 

“Sleep well, Niece,” he says. “I will see you on the morrow.”

She gives a shallow dip, and says nothing at all; her throat is too tight, as though someone is strangling her from inside. When she turns and enters her tent, she finds that the lamps are all still lit, the lights burning higher than the lamps in the king’s tent, and Eowyn is sitting on her bed. She looks up when Farduil steps inside, and when Farduil lets the tent flap fall, Eowyn stands.

“Shall I?” Eowyn asks, and Farduil says, her throat still tight,

“Please.”

Eowyn’s fingers are quick and gentle as they unlace Farduil’s dress. When Eowyn’s fingertips brush Farduil’s skin--near the collar of her shift, on the inside of Farduil’s elbow, the nape of Farduil’s neck where her hair has been pinned--Farduil thinks that she will find happiness in Edoras.

When her hair has been brushed out, she shakes it over her shoulder, then reaches up, twisting it around her hand. Her hair is dark, darker than her brother’s and her father’s; darker than her mother’s, from what she can remember. She wonders if her children will have her hair, or if they will have the same yellow-gold hair of Eomer and Eowyn. (She wonders if her daughters be as beautiful as Eowyn, as pale and straight and unyielding.) She twists her hair around her hand twice more, then lets it go. When she looks up, Eowyn is watching her quietly.

“You look stern,” Farduil says in a soft voice, and she holds her hands out to Eowyn. “So stern, Lady. Would you be glad if I told you that I shall live in Edoras,” she asks, “with you and with your brother?”

Eowyn’s face becomes something brilliant to see: her eyes grow bright and her smile is sudden and, when she clasps Farduil’s hands in her own, Farduil cannot help but to lean upward to kiss Eowyn’s mouth gently.

“I am glad,” Eowyn says, and Farduil repeats it after her, saying fervently:

“I am glad. I am very glad.”


End file.
